Mostly West: Franz West & Artist Collaberations

The summer exhibition at Inverleith House 2013  was devoted to the Austrian artist Franz West (1947-2012). He received the Golden Lion for lifetime achievement at the 2011 Venice Biennale, thank goodness, the year before he died. For the first time, fifty of his collaborations with other artists were shown together, in Edunburgh, curated by Ines Turian, Curator of the Franz West Foundation. Not many places in Edinburgh can have generated as many smiles this year, not even the Fringe.

Fleur Mal, (2012/13),  Andreas Reiter Raabe and Franz West have a papier mache lamp hanging above visitors when they arrived at the exhibition.

One, fabulous, fun filled room is filled with collaborations with young German artist, Anselm Reyle.

This room is the result of Franz's collaboration with Scottish artist Douglas Gordon, 'Every Little', (2003),  two of West's famous three seater sofas  face each other, above them a line of words  upend the song........"Every time I think of you"......  runs around the walls.

Fifteen, white, elongated sculptures made by a group of artists who West had assembled for an installation entitled Edelweiss.

'Talk Without Words' (Christopher Wool) (2012), by Franz West and Marina Faust invites four people to sit around a table and initiate a form of non-verbal communication by head-butting an outsize green ball of wool.

Franz's collaboration with Sarah Lucas is represented by a papier mache representation of a rock, with an  egg, fried fresh each day, on top.

Another collaboration between Franz West and Sarah Lucas was a figure made out of "spaghetti" like tubes, fags, cigarettes, called Spaghetti West.

Franz West's, Adaptives' (Passstckes) ,made their first  appearence in 1974. In Edinburgh these amorphously shaped sculptures also inivite visitors to do what ever they would like to do with them, within the confines of  'Spiegel in Kabine mit Passtucken', (1996), Franz West's collaboration with Mic heangelo Pistoletto, made from a mirror, wood, video, epoxy, metal and newspaper.